0005418: Configure script does not honour honor CC environement variable

Notes
(0006364) meyer (developer) 2011-12-17 19:51	Hello, I am not sure what kind of improvement it gives over -cc and -as command line options. In particular, how it should interact with these. My worry is also that it's too implicit. Why not to say ./configure -cc ${CC} -as ${AS} ? However I'm not maintaining any packages, so I have no strong evidence if such tweak to environment would work out much better. If you provide some examples how it will improve packaging I'd be grateful. Best, Wojciech

(0006891) michi (reporter) 2012-02-06 23:41	Hi Wojciech, Mantis Bug Tracker wrote: > I am not sure what kind of improvement it gives over -cc and -as command line > options. In particular, how it should interact with these. > > My worry is also that it's too implicit. Why not to say ./configure -cc ${CC} > -as ${AS} ? This way of passing arguments to configure files is consistent with the way to pass arguments to Makefiles. GNU Autotools (autoconf et al.) also stick to this convention. (Most probably, people working on a project requiring fancy compiler options have a shell code snippet setting CC, CFLAGS, etc. that they can source before starting to work in the project.) > However I'm not maintaining any packages, so I have no strong evidence if such > tweak to environment would work out much better. If you provide some examples > how it will improve packaging I'd be grateful. Taking CC into account makes packaging easier, because CC just works the same way as with other packages. At that time, the FreeBSD port patches ocaml's Makefiles to let them understand CC. If you are open for a patch, I will submit you a more accurate version than the one I sent the first time. Best, Michael

(0006900) doligez (manager) 2012-02-08 17:51	I tend to agree with Wojciech, it's too implicit. More than once I've had a spurious environment variable that caused strange errors and wasted a lot of my time. See the discussion of PR#5385 for an example. Also, it's not clear whether you want to change the behaviour of "configure" or the Makefiles themselves.

(0006901) michi (reporter) 2012-02-08 20:27	It seems that the FreeBSD port will keep its patch to the upstream build system for quite a long time… which is also fine, as far as I am concerned. However, while I agree that configuration options passed by environment variable may be a bit implicit (and it sometimes bate me as well), I would like to make two points: 1. There is many build systems using environment variables like CC, CFLAGS and so on as parameters. At least the BSD build system (bsd.prog.mk for instance), the gnu autotools, and virtually all make-alike utility comes with default rules involving these environment variables. So environment variables like CC, CFLAGS, and so on, are stamped `use with caution` and caution they deserve. 2. What is broken is not the use environment variables to pass options to a procedure, but inconditionnaly setting them! I have some projects requiring paricular environment variables to be set. Instead of globally setting these variables, I have a .tcshrc file in the root dir of the project, say ~/project/x and an alias project_x='cd ~/project/x && source .tcshrc' which sets me ready to work on the project. Console programs in KDE or OS-X also have a notion of `profile` that gives another convenient way to associate custom shells to projects. Best regards, Michael

(0008142) avsm (reporter) 2012-09-22 00:10	I don't quite understand why the FreeBSD port needs to patch any Makefiles. The OpenBSD port simply passes: CONFIGURE_ARGS+=-cc '${CC} ${CFLAGS}' which lets the ports system work fine with a custom CC and/or CFLAGS.

(0008408) michi (reporter) 2012-11-01 21:01	While porting ocaml-4.00.1 I decided to switch the old strategy I inherited with the port to the one you suggested. Meanwhile I noticed that gcc is hardcoded Makefile portions generating dependencies (grep for 'gcc -MM'). The concerned files are: > find . -name Makefile \| xargs grep -l 'gcc -MM' ./asmrun/Makefile ./byterun/Makefile ./otherlibs/bigarray/Makefile ./otherlibs/graph/Makefile ./otherlibs/num/Makefile ./otherlibs/str/Makefile ./otherlibs/systhreads/Makefile ./otherlibs/threads/Makefile ./otherlibs/unix/Makefile As FreeBSD maintainer of the port, I am interested in using clang as a compiler and 'clang -MM' does the same work as 'gcc -MM'. I made simple tests, and it seems that 'gcc/clang -MM' works fine when given superfluous options, so it could be an acceptable solution to replace 'gcc -MM' by '${CC} -MM'.

Issue History
Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2011-12-09 09:19	michi	New Issue
2011-12-09 09:19	michi	File Added: configure.patch
2011-12-17 18:04	meyer	Assigned To	=> meyer
2011-12-17 18:04	meyer	Status	new => assigned
2011-12-17 19:51	meyer	Note Added: 0006364
2011-12-31 02:41	meyer	Status	assigned => acknowledged
2011-12-31 02:41	meyer	Assigned To	meyer =>
2012-02-06 23:41	michi	Note Added: 0006891
2012-02-08 17:51	doligez	Note Added: 0006900
2012-02-08 20:27	michi	Note Added: 0006901
2012-09-06 16:47	doligez	Target Version	=> 4.00.1+dev
2012-09-20 18:04	doligez	Target Version	4.00.1+dev => 4.00.2+dev
2012-09-22 00:10	avsm	Note Added: 0008142
2012-11-01 21:01	michi	Note Added: 0008408

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